Brief cell-phone video of a Japanese ice cream truck driving by the house. No colorful pictures or bad electronic music here; just an alarmingly straightforward recording of a guy saying, in random order: oishii (tasty), ringo (apple), suika (watermelon), meron (honeydew). For some reason this evokes a low-level deep terror within me.
The Day I Have Been Waiting For has finally arrived and passed. If you’ve been following our story, you may remember the Cell Phone Saga of two weeks ago, in which it took three and a half hours at the Vodafone shop to discover that I couldn’t buy a phone without my Alien Registration Card (even though I had been assured I could use the “proof of application” form as a stand-in until the actual card arrived in two weeks). Well, two impatient weeks finally passed and I awoke in an eager mood just like I used to on Christmas morning. The sun was shining (and if was f-ing HOT as usual) as I made my way to the city office to pick up my alien card. They had given me a one-week range in which I should pick it up. Of course I was going on the very first day of the range, so I wasn’t sure it would actually be ready yet. (Never mind that I had gone in a week earlier just to see if it was done then. City officials couldn’t understand why I would appear outside the allotted time.)
My relief was profound when I was handed our shiny new cards. Of course I immediately headed back to Vodafone to complete the deal. It was much easier this time because I already had all the completed forms from the previous attempt. In 20 minutes the paperwork was done and the shiny new phones were in front of me. Unfortunately some mysterious process (I think it was charging the phone up and activating it) required one hour, so I went and had lunch while I waited. I walked out of the store at noon and immediately went home and devoured the manual.
(Aside: Japanese cell phones are super cool, but Jesus, the plans are expensive. For about one hour of talk time per month with no extras, it’s about $40. Text messages and other data stuff are more on top of that. Back home I got unlimited nights and weekends and about 7 hours of weekday talk time for $35. Weird.)
We both have phones (this marks the first time Steph has ever owned her own cell phone) and they point toward our different priorities. Mine is a big heavy clunker (although it’s a metallic purple clunker) which I chose because I just couldn’t resist the technology. It has:
All that for $70 (and a 2-year contract. Hope Steph re-ups!).
Steph’s phone was free with the 2-year deal and is the sexiest piece of technology I have ever held in my hot little hand. It’s apparently the world’s thinnest phone — it’s thinner than the bottom half of my Mac laptop, if that gives you an idea. We’re looking forward to finally being able to communicate when we fail to meet up for whatever reason (more on that later).
I forgot to mention: Steph was not around for all of this because she had run off to Akita City for the two-day prefectural JET orientation. I was due to meet her at the end of the day in the big city for a party at some German place, which sounded enticing after two weeks of ramen and questionable meat products. I got the phones about noon and was due on the train at 4:00.
What I didn’t expect was the giant thunderstorm that hit around 2:00. It had rained and thundered a bit at 5 in the morning but it was all gone by the time I got out of bed. Having to leave for the train in an hour, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get there without getting soaked. So I was relieved then the rain cleared up just in time for me to hit the road. I biked as fast as I possible could to the train station and made it there with 20 minutes to spare.
Now, as you probably have heard, Japanese trains are just about the most reliable thing on the planet. So I was surprised when I was directed to get on a bus to East Noshrio (the transfer point we always have to go through when leaving Noshiro). I assumed they were working on the track or something and that I would get on the normal Akita train at East Noshiro. But no: it turns out the trains simply weren’t running. The electronic schedule signs were all three hours out of date and the station was brimming with sweaty school kids going home for the weekend on a Friday night. The tiny air-conditioned station room was nice and cool but boy, was it smelly. So my train that I was supposed to board in 10 minutes didn’t arrive. Buses occasionally pulled into the station, but (of course) none of them were labeled with a destination and my shallow understanding of Japanese assured me that none of them were going to Akita either. I was somewhat shaken as I had taken it on faith that these trains were supposed to be the most reliable thing, after death and taxes. Fortunately I am used to Amtrak and its system of falling an hour behind for every two hours of actual travel, so I had patience.
Now would have been a great time for both Steph and I to have cell phones. Unfortunately I had Steph’s brand new phone with me too so it wasn’t particularly useful in this situation. But at least I was able to dash off a text message to our new friend Claire, who may or may not have actually been within shouting distance of Steph at the time, but it was the next best thing.
In the end, I had to wait around that station for an hour and half; it felt like a lifetime of alternating between muggy outside and less muggy, more musky inside. I still don’t know why the trains weren’t running; the only unusual thing that had happened that day was the thunderstorms. But this country had thunderstorms all the time and other JETs have verified that they’ve never shut down the trains before. In the end, I got a decently swanky charter bus ride straight to Akita Station, not stopping at the stations in between, which made it shorter than the equivalent train ride would have been. I got to play with my new GPS toy along the away. I have to admit, it never occurred to me that all the cool functionality of my phone would be hidden behind Japanese user interfaces. My Japanese reading ability is going to go through the roof just because I want to use all the cool stuff on my phone.
I arrived in Akita with half an hour to spare before the party started. I was ravenous and wasn’t sure what I was going to do about dinner; I also didn’t know exactly where the party was, except that it was near the Washington Hotel (which took me an extra minute to find because the building said ワシントンホテル instead). The party was at a place called Platz (already promising) and I was wandering around looking for it when I spotted a big group of white people being herded around. I fell in with them and we were there in one minute. The restaurant showed promise already because it had big beer-brewing vats in the window. I was thrilled to find out that they served food as well, so I went in and had a joyous reunion with Steph.
The party was great, and I had a quite decent (though very small) bowl of potatoes, broccoli, and “bacon” (I would call it fatty, fatty Japanese ham) smothered in glorious, glorious cheese.
At the end of the night (a nice late 9:45), Steph and I headed back to the train station with two other Noshiroids (both coincidentally from mid-northern England and great fun to listen to) and discovered that, amazingly, the trains to Noshiro still weren’t running after 8-9 hours. We were ushered outside the station to the taxi stand, where the four of us received our own postage-paid taxi delivery back to Noshiro — over an hour away. The taxi fare ended up being over $200 — which we got for our sweet 950 yen (about $9)-each train tickets.
So ended my biggest day so far in Japan. We’re officially documented with our alien cards, we have phones, we had decent beer, and we have witnessed the rare event of the Japanese train system going out. Oh yeah, and we both have bikes now so we can actually explore Noshiro more thoroughly. Sounds like the foundation for a lovely weekend.
Think you have a hard time remembering which week is recycling week? Take a look at this.
Japanese trash is separated into no less than nine categories which are picked up in different ways and at different times. Trash pickup is centralized. Everyone on each block takes their trash to a special cage on the morning of pickup.
From top to bottom:
So far we’ve survived two trash days without getting admonished by the landlady (apparently the previous tenant got a lot of lip from her about his trash sorting). Wish us luck!
It is festival season here like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t think you could avoid attending a festival if you tried in Japan in August. On Saturday, we took the one hour train ride to the closest big city, Akita, to witness the famous Kanto festival. On the train ride on the way over, we happened to run into fellow JETs Nick and Nou, also commuting to the event. How fun to run into people you vaguely know when you’re out and about in Japan!
Most of the day Chris and I spent trying to complete errands. The two bank ATMs we tried rejected our Washington Mutual cards. Subsequently, we discovered the Post Office ATM works just fine for converting dollars to yen. Weird.
Then began the cell phone saga. (Chris takes over writing.) I’ve been itching to get fancy Japanese cell phones for both of us ever since Steph got accepted by JET. I had all the bells and whistles and plans and models picked out in May. So now that we had our hanko (official signature stamps) and our alien registration card proof-of-application papers, we thought we were all set. So we walked into a phone shop in Akita and started the process with a very nice woman who knew about 10 words of English. Pick out the phones, easy. Choose the plan, not quite so easy, but simple enough. At this point Steph had leave so as not to be late for meeting our friends at Starbucks as we had earlier agreed. Figuring it would only take another 20 minutes or something for the phone stuff, I would come over when I was done. Little did I know. Filling out the forms went quickly enough (Japan is apparently known for its labyrinthine forms), and then the clerk told me it would take “about 14 minutes” for some process to complete, and then I would be on my way. About half an hour later, she called me over and apologetically told me that without my Alien Registration Card (ID that every long-stay foreigner in Japan has to get) we couldn’t get some specific part of the plan we had wanted. This started a long back-and-forth process about what changes we want to make, etc, etc, etc. Great, everything is okay now, please wait another few minutes. Here, please talk to this English-speaking representative on the phone.
To make a very long story shorter, each time I thought I was done, there was one more thing that couldn’t be done without the Alien Registration Card. I talked to the English speaker on the phone about four more times (she asked pretty much the same questions every time). In the end we weren’t able to get phones at all without the card. The entire process took (wait for it) THREE AND A HALF HOURS. Surely this national mobile phone company has had to deal with this situation before and could have told me right up front that my attempt was futile. Fortunately Steph and the other folks gave up waiting for me at Starbucks and came back to the shop after I didn’t show up for an hour and a half. At least we got two Disney table clocks out of the deal, which the phone shop gave to us for our trouble.
(Steph returns.) The cell phone ordeal wasn’t all bad, since we had all afternoon to kill anyway waiting until the evening festival. We grabbed a seat for the evening parade. The premise of this festival is that men go by with like 50 lit paper lanterns stung up on a huge bamboo pole balanced on various parts of their bodies. Cool, right? Also part of the parade are tons of drummers who go by on little mini floats… almost all of which were female. Rock on!
We ditched out of the parade pretty quickly… after 20 minutes, we felt the law of diminishing returns kick in. So we retreated a bit to the tasty food area, where we scored some okonomiyaki (this crazy everything and the kitchen sink noodle dish) and some kind of fried shrimp/green vegetable balls, both of which were pretty tasty. From this venue, we could easily see the lantern matrices ebb and flow up and down the street. What really surprised me was the abundance of hot dogs. I can’t believe how many hot dogs I’ve seen since I’ve been in Japan. The best manifestation I saw was a dog wrapped in a wonton like wrapper and then deep fried. How hard core! Lots of the street food is deep fried, and I’m trying to use moderation, so, I promise, I’ll try the deep fried dog next time.
Tomorrow is Noshiro’s day to shine, festival wise. May my town revel in it’s fantastic float pulling glory.
(We’ll be posting pictures on Flickr when our internet access situation gets settled.)
The bloom is definitely off the rose today. For some reason, I was less lucky regarding content in my orientation sessions. We attended some team teaching seminars, but they just didn’t strike home or utilize time well. In the afternoon, I attended seminars on motivating your students and the logistics of one’s first month in Japan, but they contain mostly redundant information from other lectures.
The driving lecture was definately useful. Chris and I are thinking about getting a car in Noshiro so that we have more freedom to explore the area. Cars here are crazy cheap to buy, and crazy expensive to maintain. Cars are separated into white plate (deluxe) and yellow plate (economy), which affects insurance and shaken rates.
Behold the Shaken. This is a car maintenance tax that must be paid every two years, and constitutes the major expense for your car. One may buy a used car for $400, and find a hefty $2,000 shaken to pay later. Country wide tolls are also particularly fierce… I think the cost for us to drive to Tokyo is $70 in tolls alone. AND… I was told yesterday that there is no such thing as 0% liability, so if someone comes out of nowhere and hits you, you will still be responsible for paying something like 30% of the accident costs. Yikes. You will also be fined for talking on your cell phone while driving (huzzah! I totally get behind this one). The Japanese also back into all of their parking spots. One returning JET told me that she just pulls in straight when parking to watch everyone around her freak out in incredulity.
My final meeting of the day was with other people going to my prefecture. The presenters said something about being famous for their “unintelligible dialect” (ha ha… what?) and I started to freak out again… I am super nervous about the impending trip to my new home tomorrow. Chris and I will part ways again, as I take the plane and he tries to make it there by bullet train. I think Chris and I will be the only foreigners in town for awhile, as my predecessor is leaving immediately, and the returning JET from England who’s going to show us the ropes is on holiday for the next two weeks. There’s one other newbie, but I think he shows up in a week or so.
Breathe.
I have to admit, I wasn’t really looking forward to Tokyo. Its size and general craziness level scared me a bit, not to mention its gargantuan subway system with multiple overlapping train companies and signage in æ¼¢å—. The first thing I had to do on landing (right at midnight by my body’s clock) was get to my host’s apartment in downtown Tokyo on the train during rush hour.
But Tokyo has surprised me. Within hours of arriving I already loved it. Perhaps this is because our host (fellow Mudder Andrew Hughes, who is now a lawyer at the Tokyo office of a New York firm) lives in the “embassy district” of Roppongi, a rather upscale part of town.
Many of the common perceptions of Tokyo and Japan I have already found to be true, but it’s surprised me in some ways too:
We have one remaining day in Tokyo; on Wednesday we travel to Noshiro and will see our house for the first time. I can’t wait!